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Файл:Clarel A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land I
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Ye lolled. Few dicers here, few sots,
Few sluggards, and no idiots.
‘Tis thou who servedst Mammon’s hate
Or greed through forms which holy are –
Black slaver steering by a star,
‘Tis thou – and all like thee in state.
Who knew the world, yet varnished it;
Who traded on the coast of crime
Though landing not; who did outwit
Justice, his brother, and the time –
These, chiefl y these, to doom submit.
But who the manifold may tell?
And sins there be inserutable,
Unutterable. “
Ending there
He shrank, and like an osprey gray
Peered on the wave. His hollow stare
Marked then some smaller bubbles play
CLAREL
In cluster silvery like spray:
“Be these the beads on the wives’-wine,
Tofana-brew? – O fair Medea –
O soft man-eater, furry-fi ne:
Oh, be thou Jael, be thou Leah –
Unfathomably shallow! – No!
Nearer the core than man can go
Or Science get – nearer the slime
351
HERMAN MELVILLE
Of nature’s rudiments and lime
In chyle before the bone. Thee, thee,
In thee the fi lmy cell is spun –
The mould thou art of what men be:
Events are all in thee begun –
By thee, through thee! – Undo, undo,
Prithee, undo, and still renew
The fall forever!”
On his throne
He lapsed; and muffl ed came the moan
How multitudinous in sound,
From Sodom’s wave. He glanced around:
They all had left him, one by one.
Was it because he open threw
The inmost to the outward view?
Or did but pain at frenzied thought,
Prompt to avoid him, since but naught
In such case might remonstrance do?
But none there ventured idle plea,
Weak sneer, or fraudful levity.
Two spirits, hovering in remove,
Sad with ineffi cacious love,
Here sighed debate: “Ah, Zoima, say;
Be it far from me to impute a sin,
But may a sinless nature win
Those deeps he knows?” – “Sin shuns that way;
Sin acts the sin, but fl ees the thought
352
That sweeps the abyss that sin has wrought.
Innocent be the heart and true –
Howe’er it feed on bitter bread –
That, venturous through the Evil led,
Moves as along the ocean’s bed
Amid the dragon’s staring crew.”
37. 0F TRADITIONS
Credit the Arab wizard lean,
And still at favoring hour are seen
(But not by Franks, whom doubts debar)
Through waves the cities overthrown:
Seboym and Segor, Aldemah,
With two whereof the foul renown
And syllables more widely reign.
Astarte, worshiped on the Plain
Ere Terah’s day, her vigil keeps
Devoted where her temple sleeps
Like moss within the agate’s vein –
A ruin in the lucid sea.
The columns lie overlappingly –
Slant, as in order smooth they slid
Down the live slope. Her ray can bid
Their beauty thrill along the lane
Of tremulous silver. By the marge
(If yet the Arab credence gain)
At slack wave, when midsummer’s glow
CLAREL
353
HERMAN MELVILLE
Widens the shallows, statues show –
He vouches; and will more enlarge
On sculptured basins broad in span,
With alum scurfed and alkatran.
Nay, further – let who will, believe –
As monks aver, on holy eve,
Easter orJohn’s, along the strand
Shadows Corinthian wiles inweave:
Voluptuous palaces expand,
From whose moon-lighted colonnade
Beckons Armida, deadly maid:
Traditions; and their fountains run
Beyond King Nine and Babylon.
But disenchanters grave maintain
That in the time ere Sodom’s fall
‘Twas shepherds here endured life’s pain:
Shepherds, and all was pastoral
In Siddim; Abraham and Lot,
Blanketed Bedouins of the plain;
Sodom and her four daughters small –
For Sodom held maternal reign –
Poor little hamlets, such as dot
The mountain side and valley way
Of Syria as she shows to-day;
The East, where constancies indwell,
Such hint may give: ‘tis plausible.
Hereof the group – from Mortmain’s blight
Withdrawn where sands the beach embayed
354
And Nehemiah apart was laid –
Held curious discourse that night.
They chatted; but ‘twas underrun
By heavier current. And anon,
After the meek one had retired
Under the tent, the thought transpired,
And Mortmain was the theme.
“If mad,
‘Tis indignation at the bad,”
Said Rolfe; “most men somehow get used
To seeing evil, though not all
They see; ‘tis sympathetical;
But never some are disabused
Of fi rst impressions which appal.”
“There, there,” cried Derwent, “let it fall.
Assume that some are but so-so,
They’ll be transfi gured. Let suffi ce:
Dismas he dwells in Paradise.”
“Who?” “Dismas the Good Thief, you know.
Ay, and the Blest One shared the cup
WithJudas; e’en letJudas sup
With him, at the Last Supper too. –
But see!”
CLAREL
It was the busy Jew
With chemic lamp afl ame, by tent
Trying some shrewd experiment
With minerals secured that day,
Dead unctuous stones.
355
HERMAN MELVILLE
“Look how his ray,”
Said Rolfe, “too small for stars to heed,
Strange lights him, reason’s sorcerer,
Poor Simon Magus run to seed.
And, yes, ‘twas here – or else I err –
The legends claim, that into sea
The old magician fl ung his book
When life and lore he both forsook:
The evil spell yet lurks, may be. –
But yon strange orb – can be the moon?
These vapors: and the waters swoon.”
Ere long the tent received them all;
They slumber – wait the morning’s call.
38. THE SLEEP WALKER
Now Nehemiah with wistful heart
Much heed had given to myths which bore
Upon that Pentateuchal shore;
Him could the wilder legend thrill
With credulous impulse, whose appeal,
Oblique, touched on his Christian vein.
Wakeful he bode. With throbbing brain
O’erwrought by travel, long he lay
In febrile musings, life’s decay,
Begetting soon an ecstasy
Wherein he saw arcade and fane
356
And people moving in the deep;
Strange hum he heard, and minstrel-sweep.
Then, by that sleight each dreamer knows,
Dream merged in dream: the city rose –
Shrouded, it went up from the wave;
Transfi gured came down out of heaven
Clad like a bride in splendor brave.
There, through the streets, with purling sound
Clear waters the clear agates lave,
Opal and pearl in pebbles strown;
The palaces with palms were crowned –
The water-palaces each one;
And from the fount of rivers shone
Soft rays as of Saint Martin’s sun;
Last, dearer than ereJason found,
A fl eece – the Fleece upon a throne!
And a great voice he hears which saith,
Pain is no more, no more is death;
I wipe away all tears: Come, ye,
Enter, it is eternity.
And happy souls, the saved and blest,
Welcomed by angels and caressed,
Hand linked in hand like lovers sweet,
Festoons of tenderness complete –
Roamed up and on, by orchards fair
To bright ascents and mellower air;
Thence, highest, toward the throne were led,
And kissed, amid the sobbings shed
CLAREL
357
HERMAN MELVILLE
Of faith fulfi lled. – In magic play
So to the meek one in the dream
Appeared the NewJerusalem:
Haven for which how many a day –
In bed, afoot, or on the knec
He yearned: Would God I were in thee!
The visions changed and counterchanged –
Blended and parted – distant ranged,
And beckoned, beckoned him away.
In sleep he rose; and none did wist
When vanished this somnambulist.
39. OBSEQUIES
The camel’s skull upon the beach
No more the sluggish waters reach –
No more the languid waters lave;
Not now they wander in and out
Of those void chambers walled about –
So dull the calm, so dead the wave.
Above thick mist how pallid looms,
While the slurred day doth wanly break,
Ammon’s long ridge beyond the lake.
Down to the shrouded margin comes
Lone Vinc and starts: not at the skull,
The camel’s, for that bides the same
As when overnight ‘twas Mortmain’s stool.
But, nigh it – how that object name?
358
Slant on the shore, ground-curls of mist
Enfold it, as in amethyst
Subdued, small fl ames in dead of night
Lick the dumb back-log ashy white.
What is it? – paler than the pale
Pervading vapors, which so veil,
That some peak-tops are islanded
Baseless above the dull, dull bed
Of waters, which not e’en transmit
One ripple ‘gainst the cheek of It.
The start which the discoverer gave
Was physical – scarce shocked the soul,
Since many a prior revery grave
Forearmed against alarm’s control.
To him, indeed, each lapse and end
Meet – in harmonious method blend.
Lowly he murmured, “Here is balm:
Repose is snowed upon repose –
Sleep upon sleep; it is the calm
And incantation of the close.”
The others, summoned to the spot,
CLAREL
Were staggered: Nehemiah? no!
The innocent and sinless – what! –
Pale lying like the Assyrian low?
The Swede stood by; nor after-taste
Extinct was of the liquid waste
359
HERMAN MELVILLE
Nor infl uence of that Wormwood Star
Whereof he spake. All overcast –
His genial spirits meeting jar –
Derwent on no unfeeling plea
Held back. Mortmain, relentless: “See:
To view death on the bed – at ease –
A dream, and draped; to minister
To inheriting kin; to comfort these
In chamber comfortable; – here
The elements all that unsay!
The fi rst man dies. Thus Abel lay.”
The sad priest, rightly to be read
Scarce hoping, – pained, dispirited –
Was dumb. And Mortmain went aside
In thrill by only Vine espied:
Alas (thought Vine) thou bitter Swede,
Into thine armor dost thou bleed?
Intent but poised, the Druze looked on:
“The sheath: the sword?”
“Ah, whither gone?”
Clarel, and bowed him there and kneeled:
“Whither art gone? thou friendliest mind
Unfriended – what friend now shalt fi nd?
Robin or raven, hath God a bird
To come and strew thee, lone interred,
With leaves, when here left far behind?”
“He’s gone,” theJew; “czars, stars must go
360
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